5. VocabMarks During Reading - Constructing Strategy

· Rationale:
This strategy is a quick way for students to list unfamiliar words when they encounter them in their reading. There is also space to write the page number where the word was first encountered so that the student can go back to it easily. This is a fast way for students to make their own vocab lists. Students can immediately identify new words while reading and write them on the VocabMark with a water-based pen. In this way, the VocabMark can be reused repeatedly. This strategy provides students with an immediate means of interacting with new terms.

· Courses in which it could be implemented:
For Language Arts students: Inclusion, regular Language Arts students, and accelerated Language Arts students. It could be used in other courses where vocabulary terms are frequently studies like science and history. I think also that math students could use this strategy. Geometry students could record technical words and meanings.

· Diverse learners:
Students who are strugglers in the inclusion class, regular ed in the regular Language Arts classes, and Accelerated learners who are ahead of the other students can build their vocabularies because they can record their new words and use context clues to determine the meanings.

· Procedure:
1. The teacher models finding unfamiliar words while reading and how to record them on a VocabMark. Then VocabMarks are distributed or students make their own.
2. On the Vocab Marks, students list new words or words that are used in an unfamiliar context.
3. They also list the page number where the word was found.
4. These new words are transferred to their vocabulary notebooks where students define them and demonstrate how to use them.

· Potential Issues:
I would make a model of my own and show the students how to use it. Students could also record words on their book marks, but the bookmarks would have to be made at a wider width. Also, if they included the definition, it would have to be made wider.


· References (Bibliography Information & Cross reference the Resource Binder):





Stephens, E. C. & Brown, J. E. (2005). A handbook of content literacy strategies: 125 practical reading and writing ideas. Strategies for Constructing (pp. 129-130). Norwood, MA: Christopher –Gordon.